Maryam Shah, QMI Agency

TORONTO - Ashley Smith was convicted of minor offences and ended up in a “nightmare” unleashed by Canada’s prison system, her family’s lawyer said Monday.

A long-awaited inquest into the Oct. 19, 2007 death of 19-year-old Smith — who strangled herself while in custody at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener — began Monday.

“This is a kid whose future, her life, was determined by how many guards decided to lay charges on her, who didn’t like the way they interacted with her,” Julian Falconer, the lawyer for the Smith family, said outside the Coroner’s Court building in Toronto.

He added the young girl went in for “relatively minor offences and ended up in a nightmare that is Correctional Services of Canada.”

The all-female inquest jury heard evidence of sentences handed to Smith while she was in custody, lengthening her incarceration.